The Final Frontier

by Neil Clarke

  As soon as that hit her, she was rolled over into a flood of need—not desire, not yearning, but a compulsion as inexorable as every indrawn breath, as unconsidered as a heartbeat. That was where she needed to go. Somewhere in that was home. Home for this engine rig which had burrowed into the side of a planetoid; home for Tarsul, for some pilot who had come before. Kiu reached, and the whole of space seemed to shudder around her. The accelerator snapped into motion.

  And then Kiu came dislocated, like a joint wrenched out of socket, and shoved herself away from the interface. She flew in the low gravity; hit both knees and her forehead and palms on the cold composite of the hall, and then twisted, snarling, her entire sense of self ricocheting against the walls of her skull.

  Tarsul was there. His hands hot on her arms, and she twisted in the microgravity, lashing out.

  “Calm,” he urged her.

  She snarled. Tried to shake him off.

  Everything felt wrong in the low gravity. Kiu had lived her entire life in the real gravity of a planet, or the centrifugal gravity of a station—out here, she felt dislodged, disconnected, like her entire life had become illusory when she had become weightless. That only made her angrier.

  They have gravity on the arcology, some fragment of memory—not her own—reminded her. Minded her? Could it be a reminder, happening for the first time? Not centrifugal. Experimental?

  Like the planetary accelerator she’d just plugged into? Like—

  Tarsul’s gloved hands, curling against her sleeves, colder and more rigid than they should have been. A soporific calm beginning to infiltrate her consciousness.

  She kicked out, and Tarsul let her go. He floated back toward the opposite wall, head canted.

  He wasn’t wearing gloves.

  “What,” she pronounced, “the fuck?”

  “You’re more equipped to answer that question,” he said. “Did something go wrong?”

  Kiu spluttered. She dragged the back of her hand across her mouth, glaring murder at Tarsul. Her hands itched for violence. Worthless drifting piece of debris—dragged me out here to make a fool of me—

  “Who were those people? Where was that—those weren’t my memories!”

  Tarsul considered that. Then he said, “Ah.”

  “Ah?”

  “The accelerator gleans memories from each of its pilots,” he said. “I believe it was also intended as some form of . . . archival device, perhaps? As an ancillary function. I was told it was quite pleasant. Reassuring, in a way.”

  Kiu spat. “Reassuring?”

  “Especially for a history as contentious as ours.”

  Kiu didn’t know enough to unpack that. Didn’t know Tarsul enough to interpret it. Still, she could have sworn he looked amused.

  And that—

  That was too much. The rage closed over her like a fist, like plunging into the water by a sulfur geyser, noxious and hot and filling her lungs. She lunged.

  Tarsul’s amusement vanished in an instant. And, fast—too fast, with the kind of rapid-twitch motion that spoke to muscular augments, reflex enhancements, he sidestepped her attack, and put his hand out to catch the back of her neck. In another second he had her forehead against a wall, one of her wrists caught and pressed against the small of her back.

  “It’s adaptive to fight when one’s life is at risk,” he said. “You are not under threat. Despite what you may feel. This, particularly, is maladaptive action.”

  Humiliation coiled at the pit of her gut. Tarsul was treating her like a child, or like some kind of a toy—pick her up from the cell because she was convenient, right, bring her here and plug her into the engine like she was a spare part, lecture her like she was some idiot. “Let me go,” she warned.

  To her surprise, he did. “I like you,” he said. Then, an incredulous noise from Kiu: “My policy is to like all people until I have a reason to dislike them. Because I asked you to join me, I have a duty to . . . situate you. I’d ask you, as a kindness, not to make this job more difficult.”

  Kiu spluttered.

  “Of course, I knew I took a risk when I found you.” Tarsul turned his back to her, which only made the rage spike higher. “But people with artificial neural networks as advanced as yours tend not to be the kind of people who would leave their homes forever, with very little explanation. You were the culmination of seven years of searching.” He turned his ear back toward her. “I’m curious how you came to be where you were.”

  Yeah; most of the people with her kind of augments weren’t sad-sack drifters, weren’t murderous detriments to society. She got that; she was special. “I don’t want to talk about my past,” she growled.

  “Of course not. But our pasts influence our futures.” Tarsul rolled one shoulder. “I also have a duty to the arcology. Bringing this planetoid to them ensures their resource security for another thousand years, perhaps. But you, Kiu Alee—”

  He turned his whole body back to her, head canted, as though he could pin her with his listening the way someone else might pin her with a gaze.

  “I also want to know that I ensure their security by bringing them you.”

  Kiu avoided Tarsul as much as she could, given the confines of the ship. It wasn’t as difficult as she’d feared; the accelerator sprawled, replete with odd closets and rooms which had been mostly, but not entirely, cleared of detritus. Kiu made a room for herself out of the provisions that Tarsul had, apparently, bought on Erhat: a sleeping cocoon, listening materials on a tablet, a selection of meals, all with their own containment and heating units, so she didn’t have to run the risk of encountering him whenever she wanted food.

  She’d refused suspended animation. After the interface, she didn’t relish the thought of going back down into her brain, even if she wouldn’t be conscious to experience it.

  Still, after a while—without anything that served to delineate the time, either to a trade standard or a local schedule—she started wondering just how long she could manage. The accelerator’s black walls were depressing and disorienting, like she was both adrift in starless space and confined in a space where the walls were too close. She could reach out and just barely not touch the walls of the room.

  So eventually, she started wandering.

  It was strange, how easily her body adapted to moving through the gravity of this place. As though her body was also accessing memories that weren’t hers.

  And eventually, she encountered Tarsul.

  He was at rest, reclining on a little bench which may not have been a bench, in design. His hands were folded on his chest. He wasn’t moving, but he was breathing deep and even; his eyes were open, so he wasn’t sleeping. Kiu paused in the doorway to the little room.

  “What are you doing?”

  Tarsul tilted his head. “It’s been a long time since I’ve been home,” he said. “It’s strange to realize I’m finally returning.”

  Kiu grunted. She let herself in, a few more handspans. Still kept a good distance between herself and Tarsul. “How long?”

  Tarsul was silent.

  Kiu narrowed her eyes at him, but she kept silent as well. Even so, Tarsul exhaled, sounding like he was disappointed in her. “I’m not sure, exactly.”

  “How many times have you made this trip?” Kiu asked.

  At that, Tarsul actually looked surprised. He turned so that his whole body was facing her, head canted to one side.

  “Me?” he asked. “The last time we sought resources from a star system was over a hundred twenty standard generations ago. How old do you think I am?”

  “I remembered you,” Kiu said. “You were there, in the accelerator’s memory.”

  Tarsul’s eyebrows knit together. “Two explanations,” he said. “One: your own memories contaminated the accelerator’s stored memory at the same time its contaminated yours. Pieces of your own experience became blended with what you remembered. None of the memories are faithful representations of anyone’s experience. Two: coincidence. Someone on an histo
rical resource-gathering expedition looked like me. Nothing more.”

  That would make more sense, she supposed.

  Because what was the other explanation? He was over a hundred twenty standard generations old?—whatever that even meant, coming from his colony. Unlikely; the best genetic treatments couldn’t extend life that far. He was cloned, or gengineered? Plausible, but why? She’d met plenty of heavily-gengineered humans, and they were without fail more impressive than Tarsul seemed to be. And if over a hundred generations had passed since that memory, they probably would have improved their gengineering, too. Why reuse the same models?

  “You came out here. From your arcology.”

  Tarsul nodded, absently.

  “How did you—” Not go insane? “Keep busy on the way out?”

  “Meditation, mostly,” Tarsul said.

  “Really?”

  Tarsul spread his hands. “I regarded it as a pilgrimage. I was chosen because I was . . . temperamentally suited to such a long journey. Unfortunately, that was a consideration I didn’t have the luxury to make, for you.”

  Kiu made a disparaging noise.

  “Maybe you’d prefer to sleep,” Tarsul said. “We can still put you into suspension. I’m told that it’s a dreamless sleep.”

  The same way that memory was supposed to be reassuring? Kiu thought. “No. Thank you. I’ll figure something out.”

  “Of course,” Tarsul said. “Let me know if I can offer any diversion.”

  “I’m not much into meditation,” Kiu said.

  Tarsul laughed, briefly. “I’d think not. Even so.”

  “Right.”

  Kiu lingered for a moment longer, then took herself away down the hall.

  And occupied herself for some short span before folding, and admitting that stasis might be a more comfortable way of traveling by far.

  Tarsul was right about this, at least—the sleep was dreamless.

  She had no conception of the passage of time when consciousness infiltrated her mind again, arriving in a fog of sleepy confusion. She came to not quite knowing where she was; shivering very badly. Entirely psychosomatic, she’d been told, but she didn’t believe it.

  Tarsul was at the console beside her stasis bay, an inscrutable series of tones informing him of something. Kiu’s arm ached, faintly, where an IV had gone in. “We’re there?” she asked—but the apprehension of entering a new world, a strange station and culture, didn’t have a chance to develop.

  “We’re off-course,” Tarsul said. Maybe it was her imagination, but he sounded tired. “Something must have gone wrong with the calculations.”

  Kiu pushed herself out of the bay, and caught herself against the wall. It felt strangely warm against her palm. “I thought you said the accelerator handled all the actual calculations.”

  “With some form of input, some guidance, from the pilot,” Tarsul said. “I don’t pretend to understand the intricacies. But it has never failed, before.”

  And with that, a new apprehension rose in Kiu’s chest. “What’s that mean?” Don’t ask me to, don’t ask me to—

  “It means we’re traveling into nothingness,” Tarsul said. “Unless you can correct the course. The accelerator can correct itself, I’m led to believe, even at these speeds.”

  The apprehension roiled into full-blown fear. “You want me to plug back into that thing.”

  “Unless the thought of drifting forever appeals to you.” Tarsul turned his ear toward the hall. “Though ‘forever’, in our case, is bounded by the finite amount of supplies we have on board.”

  Slow deaths, then. Set against the immediate threat of all those voices, all those images, blooming up in Kiu’s mind. Her heart sped.

  As though he could hear that, Tarsul turned back toward her. “It can wait. A few hours will hardly make a difference.”

  Except that it would be a few hours more of sitting and dreading. Kiu grit her teeth. “No. I’ll go now.” Go under threat, but then this entire voyage had been under threat. That was nothing new.

  She went back to the interface. Plugged herself in. Tensed her shoulders, tensed her hands, and all sensation of shoulders and hands and body dissolved.

  Into—

  A little planetoid was nothing. She stood at the helm of a planet, now—no atmosphere to shear off, but thrust turned it oblate. Their progress was slower. Not, however, slow. They could put together most of a system this way—

  Or simply flee. Another time, another planetoid, another pilot, staring down at his gloved hands. Memories already coursing through his brain, which Kiu felt at one remove. The whole black body of the accelerator representing a theft as well as an escape. Looking up, to meet the eyes of an engineer who had no idea how to work any but its most basic functions, an entire body of knowledge left behind. Saying—

  The tall man again, the one who looked like Tarsul, saying, No, it’s futile. In the long run, the arcology will die. Of isolation. Of indolence. Of attrition. Saying, the prudent choice is to return to a star, and all the resources it offers. Not to continue out here, in the black.

  Saying, I’ll do my best for you, but I won’t do anything beyond that.

  Kiu didn’t even remember the snap of the course correction; the driving need to go home. She snapped back into herself like a line under tension, shaking, with her hands in fists. And Tarsul, standing there, head cocked, as though he could hear the rage pouring off her. As though he’d neglected one of the traditional senses for some fleet of senses she had no knowledge of.

  I won’t do anything. So very like Tarsul, that.

  She could have killed him, there.

  Could have. That was a proven fact—and she’d thought, for the most part, that killers were people unlike her; people who didn’t know what direction rationality lay in when it was pointed out to them, people whose brains were fried by some accident of genetics or chemical interest or brainwash mis-socialization. Not people like her, who got angry, yeah, but knew where the line was. And yet.

  And yet.

  There in no particular Erhat corridor, with no particular history of confrontation, in a bad half-second on a bad day in a bad string of days, some Erhat boy no older than her had looked at her and his face had twisted, the universal human expression of disgust, and he’d sent some social impulse off with an ostentatious tilt of his head. Something that had caused his networked friend down the hall to turn, and look at Kiu, and laugh, and Kiu, who’d been through too many homes already and knew, knew that she was still a piece of foreign debris in this one but would have liked to go a day without being reminded of the fact—had taught a lesson with a small stylus, just tapered enough to enter through human muscle and skin, given enough force.

  Nothing said I belong; I’m valuable, I’m worthwhile than a staggering act of antisocial tantrum, huh. Even she knew that had been stupid.

  It had stopped his friend from laughing, though. At the time, she hadn’t seen past that—not one second, not one thought, not one millimeter.

  Tarsul, now, had his eyes unfocused—they were always unfocused—but it seemed as though he was looking far afield. All the way out to his arcology, full of people whose skin was no thicker than that young man in the corridor. They could solve the problem of resource collection in the interstellar nothingness, but maybe they couldn’t solve the problem of her.

  “Kiu,” Tarsul said. His tone made resentment march up her spine.

  What are you going to do? she could have asked. I’m the only one who can pilot this ship. I’m the only way your stupid arcology will have the material to keep breathing, keep eating, keep the lights on. You need me.

  To the exact extent that he needed this expedition to return successfully. And just what extent was that?

  Was he the person in the accelerator’s archived memory?

  He let out a long breath, here and now. “Maybe you should sleep again.”

  “I don’t want to sleep.” She didn’t want to stay awake, either. She wanted to crawl
out of her skin. Get in a fight. Hurt someone.

  Tarsul sighed again, and said, “I see.”

  “What are you going to do with me?” Kiu demanded. She realized, as she said it, how her breath sounded—ragged, rough, like she was looking for a fight. She was looking for a fight. She knew where she stood, when her fists hit flesh. “I’m bringing you home.” I’m doing my best.

  I won’t do anything beyond that.

  “I’ve yet to decide,” Tarsul said. Like nothing, like this was easy.

  Kiu jerked up from the interface chair.

  Tarsul stepped back, and then turned, and walked away.

  Kiu ran the halls, as best she could. Tried to burn off the anger. It worked as badly as it ever had.

  Between footfalls, between corners, she tried to think of options.

  They were frustratingly few. She didn’t know how to fix the accelerator so it would listen to her; she didn’t know how to fix herself. So, maybe Tarsul would decide he was better off with her dead. She could strike first—she thought she’d be good at that—but if she killed Tarsul, what would she do? Show up at his arcology without him and expect them to let her in? They sounded like class-A xenophobes; Kiu didn’t find the idea likely.

  What else? Pilot the planetoid somewhere else? The accelerator alone would sell to just about any shipyard or research consortium for more than Kiu would need, but it seemed to have a mind of its own. Kiu had no idea how Tarsul had gotten it out to the Erhat system in the first place; maybe it was easier without a planetoid attached, but she couldn’t even get it to go where it wanted to go. So that was out.

  Which left . . . not much. Starve to death slowly as the provisions ran out.

  She punched a wall. It didn’t help.

  In time, as though it had a gravity all its own, she went back to the interface.